Something You Don't Want to Lose
by JJ2467
Summary: Basically slow burn, Nick and Ellie getting together. I don't know how long this will wind up being, but I can't stop thinking about that jar so here we are.
1. Chapter 1

_Alright I am officially pinning my hopes on Nick and Ellie because someone this show should be able to have a normal relationship where the other person doesn't get murdered righting the wrongs of their past, or get paralyzed in an explosion and give birth to twins during a hostage situation, or die tragically of cancer in childhood, or their husband cheats on them and then their rebound guy is murdered by a terrorist right after proposing, or fake their death and leave behind a surprise love child. I mean seriously guys, get it together. Also that Kasie line got me real good, and I can't stop thinking about it._

* * *

_I don't know, put something in it you don't want to lose:_

Nick looked at the jar sitting on his kitchen counter. A bit of moonlight came through the apartment window shining against the glass. Nick looked over at the clock, _3:24AM_, he rubbed his hands down his face before resting his chin in his hands staring at that stupid jar full of water. He hadn't slept in days, every time he closed his eyes he saw ripples in the surface of the lake, heard himself yell for her, but no sound came back, and the lake grew still.

It was like every night he went home and he couldn't breathe again until she came into work the next day. _3:27AM. _It was too early to go work, and if he showed up before six again he was pretty sure Gibbs was going to have a serious talk with him. Nick laid back down on his couch resting his head on his arm and stared at the ceiling. 20 minutes later he still couldn't sleep, he glanced over at the clock _3:28AM, oh for fucks sake. _

He grabbed the jar off the table and slammed the front door of his apartment open and then closed behind him. The jar rested in the passenger seat as he pulled up to the building. He picked it up and made his way up the staircase before knocking quietly on the door. It swung open a few seconds later to reveal a clearly already wide awake McGee. Nick walked passed him into the kitchen putting his jar on the counter and filling a mug with scotch.

"What's with the jar?" McGee asked nodding towards it.

"Kasie gave it to me." Nick replied taking a sizable swig out of his mug. "I don't want to talk about it."

"So naturally you brought it to my house and put it on my counter so I wouldn't mention it. Got it." Delilah said rolling into the room. McGee grabbed two more mugs from the cabinet pouring scotch into his own and wine into Delilah's. The three surrounded the counter drinking in silence. "You going to tell Ellie you're in love with her?" Delilah said breaking the silence.

McGee snorted scotch out his nose in response and nudged her in the shoulder with a shut up look burning in his eyes.

"What? I may not have been here for the last one but I saw the aftermath and it was ugly. Couldn't we just collectively agree to not do that again." Morgan whining from her bedroom interrupted Delilah and she wheeled down the hall towards the twins room shooting a pointed look at her husband.

Silence fell between the men as they drank staring at the jar. "It's from the lake." Nick said barely above a whisper.

"Ellie was here yesterday." McGee said looking up at Nick. "Nightmares."

Silence fell again. McGee reached out and pushed the jar just in front of Nick "She's probably awake." He said taking the mug out of Nicks' hands and placing it in the sink. "And I no longer want to be."

Nick gave him a small smile and picked up the jar.

* * *

McGee came in to work the next morning to find Nick sitting at his desk, jar placed beside the picture of himself. He shot him a smile and sat down at his desk.

The elevator dinged as Bishop came out and made her way over to her desk tossing her go bag against the half wall. "Good morning," she called out looking around the bullpen "what's with the jar?" she called over to Nick.

McGee shot him a look, he hadn't gone to see her after all. "I'll tell you someday," Nick said before looking over at McGee "I've got time."

"Not forever." Gibbs said as he walked into the bullpen hands full of coffee. He passed out the cups to his team lingering briefly to look at Torres.

"No, not forever. But not right now." He took the coffee from Gibbs and his boss gave him a quick nod.

"Sailor dead on the USS Albany, grab your gear."

The four of them collected their badges, guns, and go bags and made their way onto the elevator. As the doors slid closed Nick glanced at Ellie standing to his side. Behind him McGee looked over at Gibbs who was eyeing the two junior agents suspiciously. "Rule number 5, boss." He said with a smile, turning his attention back to his phone.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick and Ellie angst at the end of that episode hurts my soul, also I'm low key into it. This show might've messed me up.

For some background the general idea is that Nick knows he's full on in love with Ellie, whereas Ellie is just starting to realize she likes Nick. That's the vibe I get from them on the show which makes sense cause Ellie has a garbage track record.

* * *

The case wrapped without much fanfare. Gibbs left before everybody else, Nick knew it always stung when he had to arrest a marine. He glanced up from his desk at Ellie across the bullpen. They sat in silence signing the hundreds of forms that went along with every case. It was something he certainly missed about undercover work. Mostly he didn't do paperwork, it was handled by someone higher up the chain while he flew around by the seat of his pants.

He watched as Ellie's stack of papers grew shorter. He knew his own pile was not progressing well by comparison, but there would be time for that later. "Hey Charlie!" He yelled across the bullpen. He caught the corner of a smile peaking out from under her hair, before she shook it out of her face and met his eyes.

"Yeah Luis?" she said back closing the folder in front of her and moving it to the side.

"Hungry?" It was a rhetorical question and he knew it. Eleanor Bishop didn't do full, she did hungry and starving, and had zero additional settings.

She nodded at him rising to her feet and swinging her jacket over her shoulders. He watched her pull her hair out from under her collar tossing it behind her. Her blue eyes turning to meet his. If she found anything odd about him staring she was a good enough sport not to mention it. She might just be used to it, it wasn't an infrequent occurrence that her eyes caught him looking at her. It was even more frequent that she looked up at his desk and he was already standing beside her, treating her desk like one they shared.

He rose out of his chair, stack of files unfinished on his desk. The two of them made their way to the elevator and headed down to Ellie's car. Nick had taken his bike into work this morning, and there was a zero percent chance he was taking Ellie on it. If he felt her arms hold onto his waist he was going crash the bike into a ditch about half a second later. Despite the very open nature of his 'secret' thing for Ellie he preferred not to reveal it to her by way of catastrophic injury.

He threw his bag into her back seat in a well-choreographed routine they'd developed for their post-case meals. They rode to the diner in relative silence debating which one of them had guessed the guilty party first. Ellie laughed as Nick sat beside her insisting that he had called it mere minutes after arriving on the scene.

* * *

"You're full of it Luis, and you know it." She smiled at him. She liked when they slipped into this rhythm calling each other by their old cover names. There was something much more carefree about interacting in this way than being completely themselves.

She actively avoided giving the meaning behind that a deeper thought. Something about going through all of Zivas' old things while she cleared out the shed made Ellie notice things she would normally overlook.

_And I knew that I could not live without him. _That sentence rung around in her head on a daily basis. The thought of there being this one defining moment where all the sudden everything was different than it had been before. She pulled her car into a parking space at the diner. She slowing realized that the car had been silent too long and turned to find Nick looking at her questioningly.

"Sorry." She said hopping out of the car and making her way to the door Nick trailing a foot behind her. "I didn't hear you." They made their way to an empty booth, which wasn't hard to find at this time of night.

"That's alright it wasn't important." Nick said smiling at her over the menu. Nick had a nice smile, she thought to herself. _Nope, don't go there. _She admonished. "Are you doing alright?" He asked softly.

She smiled shyly at him.

_10 days earlier she had shown up at his apartment at one in the morning. He opened the door clearly still half asleep. Ellie plodded into his living room before laying down on his couch. Nick lingered over her for a few moments before laying a nearby blanket over her and going back to bed. _

They hadn't discussed it the next morning they got called in for a case. She had told him about the nightmares before then, so she imagined he had filled in the blanks on his own.

She nodded reassuringly at him. The nod was much more confident than she really felt, the nightmares hadn't let up much. She hoped that she had hidden that from him but when she looked up she could tell from the look on his face that he could see right through her. Her hands fiddled on the table unsure of what to fill the silence with.

Slowly as if giving her room to pull away he reached his hand out and gave hers a quick squeeze before returning to his own side of the table.

The silence was soon filled with the sounds of eating and idle chit chat as minutes ticked over to an hour and even the night owls were filing out of the diner to their homes.

They pulled up outside Nick's building 20 minutes later. Lit up by the lights shining in from the street. She felt him looking at her and turned to meet his eyes. Just for a minute she felt her heart beat jump as she saw the intensity with which he was looking at her. "If you need somebody around, I'm always here for you." His serious face gave way to a smile "Alright Charlie?"

She broke into a matching smile and nodded. "Alright Luis." She watched as he made his way into his building taking a deep breath before heading home.


End file.
